Part of the story is everyone being shocked at being under budget and ahead of schedule. I don't know everything, but I think this is reasonably attributable to the fact that this is a retrofit of an obsolete spy satellite. The leftovers of the security sector will be the most advanced scientific space surveyor. I have to wonder what things would look like with different priorities.
Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope
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Re: Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope
#12For some tasks, surveys in particular, field of view is critical. You would need many Hubble telescopes to do what Roman can do mapping everything out there. "What really makes Roman stand out is that it is designed for wide-field imaging. The cameras on telescopes can often only detect objects in a very small patch of sky. If we use the size that the full moon appears in the sky as our guide, Hubble’s field of view…
And yet the narrow-field Hubble produced this famous image https://science.nasa.gov/mission/hubble/science/universe-unc... Those are galaxies. In a field of view "about 1/13th the diameter of the full Moon."
Your point being?
Hubble in certain circumstances can see narrow and far. If you express this as a cone, you can extrapolate a volume.
It might be very useful to have something that can search wide and maybe not as far; nearer Earth dangers perhaps. Express that as a wider cone and extrapolate volume.
Re: Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope
#13Part of the story is everyone being shocked at being under budget and ahead of schedule. I don't know everything, but I think this is reasonably attributable to the fact that this is a retrofit of an obsolete spy satellite. The leftovers of the security sector will be the most advanced scientific space surveyor. I have to wonder what things would look like with different priorities.
IIRC the mirror is from a spy satellite, but the chassis and electronics are all NASA.
Re: Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope
#14I'm still holding my breath on this one, will be most amazing telescope in my lifetime parked in L2 a million miles away with 500mbps data transfer rate (1.5TB per DAY) we've made it past DOGE destroying it we've made it past him renaming it after himself and putting his mugshot on it but Musk still needs to send it out of orbit without explosions, so here's hoping (Falcon Heavy, don't tell me the odds) * https://nex…
It is not 500mbps but 500Mbps. https://science.nasa.gov/mission/roman-space-telescope/commu... "mbps" is a meaningless abbreviation. You need to consistently and correctly use capital letters when communicating technical terms. You cannot "e e cummings" your way into effective writing. 500 megabits per second works out to 5.4 terabytes per day. No idea where you get 1.5, unless you were thinking of 500Mb/hour! 60 × 6…
my brain is not what it used to be due to long-covid so it's very possible I made a mistake
but 500 megabits per second to me is 500mbps?
ie. my cablemodem is 100mbps which is 100 megabits per second?
and that would [make Roman] 5.4 Terrabytes aka 5.4TB per day
but the transmitter is not at full speed full power 24/7
so it is 1.5TB per day in documentation that I do not have handy but vaguely remember
to repeat the more amazing part is that is from a MILLION MILES away, wow
(JWST "only" does 23mbps, 23 megabits per second)
Re: Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope
#15[flagged]
The telescope will be used to film sensationalist TV about missing kids
Re: Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope
#16This video linked from the site is quite good at adding a sense of scale to the undertaking. I also love that Roman will be supported by Hubble and Webb.
Re: Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope
#17Part of the story is everyone being shocked at being under budget and ahead of schedule. I don't know everything, but I think this is reasonably attributable to the fact that this is a retrofit of an obsolete spy satellite. The leftovers of the security sector will be the most advanced scientific space surveyor. I have to wonder what things would look like with different priorities.
People shouldn't be shocked that employees of the US government can deliver things ahead of schedule and under budget.
The problems are that anyone gave Musk/doge the time of day and that we're too used to the president giving no bid contacts to incompetent donors.
Re: Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is not 500mbps but 500Mbps. https://science.nasa.gov/mission/roman-space-telescope/commu... "mbps" is a meaningless abbreviation. You need to consistently and correctly use capital letters when communicating technical terms. You cannot "e e cummings" your way into effective writing. 500 megabits per second works out to 5.4 terabytes per day. No idea where you get 1.5, unless you were thinking of 500Mb/hour! 60 × 6…
my brain is not what it used to be due to long-covid so it's very possible I made a mistake but 500 megabits per second to me is 500mbps? ie. my cablemodem is 100mbps which is 100 megabits per second? and that would [make Roman] 5.4 Terrabytes aka 5.4TB per day but the transmitter is not at full speed full power 24/7 so it is 1.5TB per day in documentation that I do not have handy but vaguely remember to repeat the m…
The GP is alluding to the fact that the prefix "m" means milli-, not mega-. But that's pointless pedantry. Nobody would ever think that you meant 0.5 bits per second, and bit isn't a SI unit anyway.
Re: Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope
#19Part of the story is everyone being shocked at being under budget and ahead of schedule. I don't know everything, but I think this is reasonably attributable to the fact that this is a retrofit of an obsolete spy satellite. The leftovers of the security sector will be the most advanced scientific space surveyor. I have to wonder what things would look like with different priorities.
People shouldn't be shocked that employees of the US government can deliver things ahead of schedule and under budget. The problems are that anyone gave Musk/doge the time of day and that we're too used to the president giving no bid contacts to incompetent donors.
> the president giving no bid contacts to incompetent donors
Are you talking about SLS?
Oh maybe you'd say that is "Senate Launch System", it's complicated, job program, 50 states sharing, and so on?
Re: Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is not 500mbps but 500Mbps. https://science.nasa.gov/mission/roman-space-telescope/commu... "mbps" is a meaningless abbreviation. You need to consistently and correctly use capital letters when communicating technical terms. You cannot "e e cummings" your way into effective writing. 500 megabits per second works out to 5.4 terabytes per day. No idea where you get 1.5, unless you were thinking of 500Mb/hour! 60 × 6…
my brain is not what it used to be due to long-covid so it's very possible I made a mistake but 500 megabits per second to me is 500mbps? ie. my cablemodem is 100mbps which is 100 megabits per second? and that would [make Roman] 5.4 Terrabytes aka 5.4TB per day but the transmitter is not at full speed full power 24/7 so it is 1.5TB per day in documentation that I do not have handy but vaguely remember to repeat the m…
No, your cable modem would be 1.08 terabytes per day.
Does it stop making sense when your calculations for the Roman telescope indicate slower speeds than your connection, which you say is 1/5th the speed?
Now, since the Roman telescope will be at an L2 point, signal acquisition will always be subject to the Earth's rotation. So there will be multiple ground stations involved across the globe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Deep_Space_Network
If the quoted rate by NASA of 1.5 terabytes per day is accurate, then it will not be downlinking 24/7, but in bursts. 500Mbps is also the max, where the actual range will be 250-500. We'll need to account for RFI and packet loss, etc.